Here are the super-wealthy billionaires’ assets on Kola Peninsula – by Thomas Nilsen (The Barents Observer – June 5, 2018)

Take a closer look at these eight people. They have two things in common; all are on Forbes list of the world’s billionaires and they are all making big money from industry on the Kola Peninsula.

Alexey Mordashov tops the list, with a private fortune of $18,7 billion. An hour drive south of Murmansk, he runs the iron-ore mines in Olenegorsk. Number two on the list, Leonid Mikhelson is about to create thousands of new jobs just north of Murmansk where the construction of Kola Yard currently is the largest industrial development project anywhere north of the Arctic Circle in Europe.

Other well known oligarchs on the list includes Oleg Deripaska and Vladimir Potanin. Forbes list includes 42 Russians with a private fortune of more than $1 billion. Here, we only include those with big businesses in the Murmansk region.

The eight men have a total fortune estimated by Forbes to be $99 billion. In comparison, Russia’s military expenditure was $66 billion in 2017, according to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Also, while Russian economy is facing harder times because of international sanctions, the eight billionaires with big assets in Russia’s border region to Norway can smile all the way to the bank. According to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, published this week, they all increased the net worth substantially from 2017 to 2018.